Chukat – חוקת : “Statute”
Torah : Numbers 19:1–22:1
Haftarah : Judges 11:1–33
Gospel : John 11–12

Thought for the Week:

God’s sanctuary is supposed to be a place of life, not death. He forbids those polluted by death from entering. The sanctuary on earth is a reflection of the true sanctuary above. This teaches that before we can enter into God’s eternal presence, we must transcend our mortal state. Before entering the heavenly Temple, Yeshua exchanged His mortal flesh for the immortal. Just as a person could not enter the Tabernacle on earth until he had cleansed himself from the contamination of death, so too we cannot enter God’s eternal habitation until we leave our mortal flesh behind.

Commentary:

Then the clean person shall sprinkle on the unclean on the third day and on the seventh day; and on the seventh day he shall purify him from uncleanness, and he shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water and shall be clean by evening. (Numbers 19:19)

The Torah says that touching a corpse makes a person ritually unclean. To be cleansed, a person needed to be sprinkled with ashes from the red heifer. After completing the seven-day purification process by sprinklings with ashes of the red heifer, the defiled person was to immerse himself in water. This baptism ...